Adventure Magazine Cover — page 161: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

More than Half a King The abbot was exactly at the place where the blind beggar had disappeared, and, in the disappearing, torn bits of leaf from the shrubbery. Kagamo cast about, found a pebble to suit him, stooped, started to place the leaves beneath the hedge and mark them, when suddenly he straightened up. ‘“‘Gods of heaven and earth,” he grunted, “‘what have we here?”’ His old puckered face twitched, his eyes twitched, his pursed-up lips worked together. “T must look further,’’ he whispered aloud. “‘AndI fear to. It—it will be C’ark- san. The priests are more eager than I guessed. I must look—but I fear I will find my good friend 2 And with that he hunched down and peered again beneath the hedge. He remained in that position for a second, then scrambled under, and his puff of sur- prize shook the very roots. When he emerged, his face was as sand- colored as the path upon which he stood. He said nothing, and his face seemed to be deeper lined; he stood facing the hedge, his hands, like his eyes, twitched; yet, from all three, it was clear in some strange way that inside his head was no indecision, and that he but waited for his shocked frame to move him as the brain directed. He shuffled away, very slowly, yet upon feet which tried to hurry for him, moving with visible, with painful effort, toward his room in the temple. He did not stop, as is proscribed, at the shrine, but passed as if the god had no home there; indeed, as if he did not exist at all. (@ almost wild from the softly-falling bamboo blows, and yet, at intervals, was able to gasp that he would write noth- ing and, finally, to curse them when asked. It took but a word or two, that last, and he was actually unaware that he damned them horribly. Once he wished, in a lucid interval between blows, that he had gone down fighting, instead of suffering this lurid pain. Up—down—up—down. The bamboo-wielder, the burly priest, panted now from the continuous exertion, and Toyotama beckoned another to take his place. The torture continued; better, it was more exact, for the new man brought the stick down with absolute precision along CLARK mouthed nothings, he was 155 the ridge; still the skin was unbroken, save for the tiny drop-trickle at the intersection of the ridges, but it reddened steadily, angrily, it puffed outward as if containing fire prevented from flaming only by the continued pressure of the blows. As the minutes passed Clark felt he could stand no more. And yet the minutes passed, and Clark stood more. His muscles contracted to snapping-point, his eyes rolled and showed the whites, he frothed at the mouth—sud- denly the chalkwhite face suffused with blood. “He will not know,” Toyotama husked. “Now is the time—paper—so—release a hand—hold the pen against his fingers— good!” To Clark persuasively: “Tt is over. There will be no more. You may rest. Come—write as I tell you— write what I say—then you will have peace———"’ The white man weakly raised the re- leased hand, and struck out blindly at the face so close to his own. He had no words, was unconscious of the intended blow, which did not even reach Toyotama’s face. Clark’s head was partially raised, also, and, at the same moment as the hand motion, froth from his lips disengaged and touched the gaunt priest’s face—greatest of insults. ‘“Voh!”’ Toyotama screamed, his face twisted with rage, and lifted a food-stand, of heavy wood-and-lacquer, to dash it into Clark’s raised face. The weapon rose high, and, as if suddenly metamorphosed to a bronze thunderbolt in the hand of Kaminari, the Thunder God, remained there. A shuddering sound came from the priests; it began low and hollow, ran up to a hiss; then the silence was such that a groan, weak, half unuttered, from the prostrate white man broke into the room like the surging of some unsuspected wave. The abbot’s voice came cold, a wind from wintered Fujiyama; a thin, chill stream, before which Toyotama wilted and shriveled visibly. “‘O soulless dog!’’ it said. ‘“There will be no mercy for a coward, and less for him who is merciless. A blind beggar has joined his gods, sent by the doubly blind. The gods watch, Toyotama! The knife was quick, but the gods are quicker than your hand. They held the blind beggar to life after you oO cComicboooks ©